Absenteeism

I'm so sorry about not updating the blog since November but have had a few personal issues to take care of that took more time than expected. All is back to the old routine again, thankfully! LOL! To let you know, if I ever permanently leave this blog, I will definitely give my readers notice of it. One thing I absolutely detest is finding a great blog only to discover it was abandoned years ago....UGH!

So we are off and running again and now starting a new year! Love it! I never make New Year's resolutions because they are never kept and therefore utterly useless for me to make in the first place. If I am going to lose weight, read more, travel, eat healthy, etc., etc., etc., then I need to do that on a serious daily basis, if that is truly what I want to DO and not just WISH. Instead, now being older, and hopefully wiser, I pick a catch phrase with a single purpose. This year it is "Focus on the Work". It is much easier for me to remind myself of one thing and set goals for accomplishing it, rather than a plethora of tasks that require micromanaging and gets boring fast.

So what does "Focus on the Work" entail? It requires a certain amount of planning and forethought and I break it into small portions that are more easily accomplished. First of all I will guard my morning stitching time more jealously. That means no distractions with emails, messages or phone calls from 8:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. (unless an emergency), Monday through Friday. I get two days off a month for shopping, reading, visiting a museum, or laying around in my pajamas all day watching television, whatever strikes my fancy, but absolutely no cooking or cleaning! LOL! Once a week in the afternoon I will work on things like bookkeeping and inventory. Once a week in the afternoon for the blog and to scout out the internet for fun new stuff in the fiber/needlework world. I want to take one course online, if I can find one I want, and one to attend in person either locally or out of town. I also want to try one new needlework technique of some kind and work on becoming proficient at it over the next year, however, this one I can scrub if time necessitates. At the end of each month I will go over what was and was not accomplished that month and set new goals for the next month. I will do this on the last Wednesday afternoon of each month. The rest of the time is for real life and not the creative life.

And that's it! What's important to me is that this requires discipline while realizing that I have to be flexible and allow changes when something isn't working. That means it is changed and not dropped off the map and abandoned.

So to all of you out there in blog land, here is to a wonderful, rewarding and successful 2018 to you all, and may all your resolutions (or catch phrases!) come true!

Until next week, here is a thought nugget for you:

"Creativity takes courage."
~Henri Matisse